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My favourite things of 2014

It’s that time of the year when I start making lists. Here is some of the pop culture I’ve enjoyed in 2014.

Movies

2014 started wonderfully for film with Only Lovers Left Alive, Her and Inside LLewyn Davis remaining three of my favourite flicks throughout the year.

My film of the year, The Wind Rises

However, there were two films that massively stood out for me. Those are Richard Linklater’s wonderfully absorbing indie marvel Boyhood, and Hayao Miyazaki absolutely beautiful melancholy animation, The Wind Rises. Both, I feel, have become instant classics.

Meanwhile, Marvel once again proved they’re the studio that knows how to do contemporary blockbusters with Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy. Their main challenger for action movie of the year was the exciting and satisfying Tom Cruise sci-fi film Edge of Tomorrow.

January / February’s Oscar contenders were also solid this year, particularly Dallas Buyers Club and 12 Years A Slave.

Music

This is the year in which I turned Spotify full time, and the number of artists I’ve listened to as a result is both large and varied.

Old Crow Medicine Show on stage at the Roundhouse, Camden

There were two albums that I played more than any other though: Being As An Ocean‘s Dear G-D, an existential post-hardcore riff on faith, fate and relationships, and Body Clocks by Climates, and up and coming British metal/hardcore band with a killer opening track ‘Leaves of Legacy‘.

In terms of pop music, the year really revolved around Chvrches’ electro-indie The Bones of What You Believe and adorable YouTube twink Troye Sivan‘s debut EP TRXYE for me.

I saw some great gigs too, the pinnacle of which was probably country/folk band Old Crow Medicine Show from Nashville, Tennessee putting on one hell of a show in Camden’s beautiful Roundhouse.

Comics

I’m pretty sure my comics collection has tripled in the last year.

Billy (Wiccan) discovering his powers in Young Avengers

My favourite moment was reading the whole of Young Avengers Volume 3: Mic-Drop at the Edge of Time and Space in one sitting when it released in April (I love those characters so much, and Gillen/McKelvie are a great creative team). And then there were those few months where I got really obsessed with Jonathan Hickman’s entire Fantastic Four run from a few years back.

Image were consistently great in 2014, with Saga still going strong, plus Deadly Class and East of West particular favourites.